Dean Tornabene is the co-inventor with Charles Perez of some of the best-selling gadgets ever pushed by infomercials, including the AB Rocker and the Bun and Thigh Sculptor. His inventions over the past four years have generated more than $300 million in retail sales and direct-response TV combined.

Tornabene, a former Mr. America who has established himself as a health and fitness guru, has quite an impressive background, but his inventing skills go far beyond simply cashing in on his good looks and name recognition. Tornabene also knows how to create a distinctive product-one with the potential to find space on retail shelves and become a smash hit, not just another deadbeat collecting dust in a corner of Wal-Mart.

Tornabene's first inventions came about when he was a teenager growing up in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. His family couldn't afford expensive fitness equipment, so Tornabene created his own products. At 22, Tornabene moved to Los Angeles and gradually realized that the general public needed more than just exercise to keep in top shape. Hence, Herbal Technologies Inc. was born, a company that sells two of the most popular herbal supplements, Fat Fighting System and Metasystem.

Over the past four years, Tornabene has again turned to fitness equipment, co-inventing the AB Rocker and the Bun and Thigh Sculptor. All have been featured on direct-response TV, and now he's taking yet another stride forward: In 1999, Tornabene signed an exclusive marketing and sales contract with National Boston Medical Inc., parent company of Infotopia, to produce a minimum of 12 new infomercial products over the next four years. The newest product to be featured is the Body Rocker.

Daniel Hoyng, president, chairman and CEO of Infotopia, notes the significance of the deal: "Retail sales are even more important than direct-response sales. To keep a product on retailers' shelves, it's important to have a branding strategy that consumers can recognize."

Don Debelak (dondebelak@uswest.net) is a new-business marketing consultant who has been introducing new products for more than 20 years. He is the author of Bringing Your Product to Market (John Wiley & Sons, $19.95, 800-225-5945).

Stand Out

"OK," you're saying, "so how did Tornabene do
it?" First and foremost, you need to make sure your product is
different from all the other products out there that are similar to
yours. The market is just too demanding. "[I like] to think in
other dimensions and use a perspective that's intangible,"
says Tornabene. In other words, he looks for products that
aren't delivering what consumers want-then he focuses on that
need and tries to visualize how the product should be designed.

Consider the thought process behind the AB Rocker. Tornabene
first identified the problem: The average American doesn't
really enjoy exercising and usually stops his or her regime after a
short period of time. He then looked beyond his extensive knowledge
of fitness products to try to come up with a product to solve that
problem.

"I started to realize that the motion people find most
comforting is rocking," says Tornabene. "That's why I
decided to make rocker technology the basis of my fitness products.
The market's previous top-selling abdominal exercising product
was the AB Roller, a major hit on direct-response TV. For five
years, no one was able to come up with a better solution."
Then Tornabene invented the AB Rocker.

Your challenges as an inventor go beyond thinking in other
dimensions, however. When creating their products, many inventors
experience the frustration of trying to coordinate three very
different things: the look, the vision and the cost of the product.
You need to have a look that sets the product apart, a function
that's important to consumers and a price that consumers will
feel is a good value.

Inventors frequently fall short in at least one of these areas.
The most effective way to avoid this problem is to collaborate with
another person. Tornabene, for example, works closely with Perez, a
mechanical wizard who turns vision into reality by creating
prototypes. The two of them own a shop in Venice, California.

After experiencing the wonderful world of marketing, you'll
typically find that the best collaborative partnership is between a
person with the vision to create a new idea and a person who can
deliver a quality product. The skills of the two people complement
each other, and their different perspectives-one looking to give
customers the benefits they want, the other trying to build a
quality product at a low cost-lead to the best products.

Tornabene is a well-known inventor with a track record of
successful products-but he didn't start off that way. (Remember
that small-town story we mentioned earlier? That's where we all
begin.) What took him to the top was his ability to consider
alternatives to existing products. You'll have a better chance
of duplicating Tornabene's success if you can learn to think
outside of the proverbial box when creating your own winning
inventions.

Shelf Life

The direct-response industry has changed dramatically over the
past five years. Direct-response ads were originally used to
generate direct sales, and marketers only moved their products to
retail during and after their direct-response run. Today, marketers
use direct-response TV to supercharge retail sales.

Consider the example of Roto Zip Tool Corp., which has sold its
Roto Zip tool (looks like a power drill but acts like a router) for
25 years via building supply stores like Menards and Home Depot.
When the company ran an infomercial for three months, retail sales
increased more than 50 percent, cites Response magazine. Then
there's The Bacon Wave, a microwave-safe bacon cooker by Emson
Inc. In its initial TV run, the Bacon Wave sold 250,000 units-then
it hit the retail shelves and sold 1.5 million units in just six
months. And don't forget The Contour Cloud Pillow, which
garnered $18 million during its six-month TV campaign and went on
to sell a healthy $6 million more its first year in retail.

Retailers have learned that many people who are reluctant to buy
a product off a direct-response ad are more than happy to buy it
when they see it on store shelves. Plus, most retail products sell
like hot-cakes once they're seen on TV.

Stay Tuned

Infomercials and direct-response TV ads have become some of the
most successful routes for inventors to get their products to
leading retailers. These retailers often use the "As Seen on
TV" marketing technique to push products, as the merchandise
can keep selling long after its last TV spot. Best of all for
inventors, the infomercial promoters usually finance most-if not
all-of the cost of producing and marketing the idea. To stay on top
of the latest developments in the direct-response industry,
subscribe to Response magazine (http://www.responsemag.com), which
covers multichannel direct advertising (including infomercials),
one- to two-minute direct commercials and direct-response Web
advertising. Annual subscriptions are $39.

Beam Me Up

Many companies can help you take your product onto
direct-response TV and then into retail stores. Here's a few
you may want to try: